Wednesday March 1, 2006(Audio) Homily by Fr. Robert AltierAsh
Wednesday

Reading I (Joel 2:12-18)Reading II (2 Corinthians 5:20-6:2)

Gospel (St. Mark 6:1-6, 16-18)

In the second reading today, Saint Paul says to the Corinthians that he
is an ambassador on behalf of Christ who is calling out to be reconciled with
God, and he tells us that this is the day of salvation, that this is the
acceptable time. The Church today gives us this holy season as the acceptable
time, as the time when we are called to make changes in our lives. And it is
made clear by Our Lord how that is to be done. It is to be done secretly.

There are a couple of things we can look at. First of all, today is a
day of fasting and sometimes when people fast they get a little on the cranky
side. So Our Lord is telling us, “Make sure that you don’t do that. Make sure
that the way you fast is in a way that no one else would recognize that you are
fasting.” If we are going to be fasting, we need to make sure that we are
trying even harder to be charitable. Not being phony about anything, but making
sure that we are not allowing the hunger in our stomachs to turn into anger in
our hearts and to become mean or nasty in any way. We need to make sure that
what we are doing is taking our physical hunger and changing it into a spiritual
hunger so that the heart becomes more longing for what is right and good.

That is precisely why we are told in the prophet Joel that we are to
rend our hearts and not our garments. And while we prayed in the responsorial
psalm, Create for me, O God, a clean heart, that is what Our Lord is looking for. He is
looking for a heart that is open to Him. He is looking for a heart that is pure
and wants to be purified even more. That is what this season is all about. If
this is the day of salvation and this is the acceptable time, as Saint Paul
tells us, then we need to make sure that we are calling ourselves to true
holiness and seeking to be reconciled with God.

In this holy time, what we need to do, first of all, is to look at our
sinfulness, to confess our sins, and to strive to overcome them. But if this is
a time of holiness, then it is not just a time of a small, perfunctory kind of
penance that we might do, but it is a call to truly be holy. So we need to look
at our prayer life and we need to look at our relationship with God. If Saint
Paul is telling us in his Letter to the Corinthians that we are to be united
with Christ, then it is also to be united with Him in His suffering. When we
look at the fact that this is a day of salvation, what was necessary for our
salvation? It was necessary that Jesus Christ would take on our human nature
and that He would suffer and die and rise again. We are asked now, because we
are partakers in the divine nature, to unite with Him, to elevate ourselves
above an earthly level, so that the penances we choose during this holy season
are going to be truly holy penances, so that they are going to be something
spiritual. If Jesus came to us and took on our nature so that He could suffer
and die and give us His nature, it is so that we could be lifted up, so that we
could be truly holy as He is holy.

The only way we are going to achieve that kind of holiness is through
prayer and self-denial. If we can strive in this holy season to overcome sin
and to increase and improve and perfect our prayer life, then this truly
becomes a holy season. If, on the other hand, we are running around making sure
that people know what penances we have chosen to do (as Jesus tells us not to
do), then He tells us we have already received our reward. It is not a holy
season for us then because it is selfish. He tells us to make sure that the
things we do are done in secret. On a day like today when we are called to
fast, if we become angry, impatient, or mean, then it is not a holy day. Then our
fasting becomes an occasion of sin rather than a means to holiness. Again, we
need to make sure that we are augmenting our fasting with prayer. The saints
tell us that if we want our prayer to be heard, it is fasting that gives power
to the prayer. But it is also the prayer that obtains for us the grace to be
able to fast, and so we need both. These are the things we can think about, to
make sure we are not doing things in order that other people would see them, to
do things that are truly going to help us grow in holiness, to make sure we are
doing the things that are going to help us reconcile with God and live a more
perfect life.

That is what this holy season is all about, to look into our hearts and
tear them open, to rend the heart. What that literally means is to rip it in
half, because we know that we are sinners and we need to come before the Lord
with a broken heart. Not with pride and arrogance, but with humility, with
sorrow, and with a broken heart. When we come before Him in that kind of state,
then we are going to be willing to deny ourselves, then we are going to be
willing to do what we need to do to change so that we can stop offending Him.
If, on the other hand, we want to come before Him and try to present ourselves
as all put together and not really in need of anything, then it is with
arrogance that we come to Him and we are not going to seek any kind of
reconciliation because we do not think we need it.

So as we begin this time of Lent, the first thing we have to do is to
reflect within ourselves, and the hunger that we feel from the fasting today
will help us to be able to do that. Do not think about your stomach – think
about your heart. Just think about how much your soul has been starving for
prayer, for the Word of God, for true holiness. Look beyond the physical hunger
to the spiritual hunger. Look beyond the external things to the internal things
and ask yourself: What am I doing and why am I doing it? And make sure that
what we are doing are the things that will help to bring a reconciliation and a
growth in holiness, that what we are doing is done for the right reason: so we
can get rid of sin, so we can grow in holiness and be more perfectly united
with Jesus Christ.

*This text was
transcribed from the audio recording of a homily by Father Robert Altier with minimal editing.